A day at the Wild Animal Park

Knowing that our new friends will be moving on in a few scant weeks, we're spending all the time we can with them while we can. So we invited Karen and John and their boys to the wild animal park with us today. I realized halfway through the outing that there's yet another good reason to hang around with calm and non-reactive people. Not only are they genuinely enjoyable and peaceful to be around, but I find that when I'm feeling reactive, it's actually much easier to stop, focus on and learn from what's happening inside me if I'm not distracted by how others are reacting around me.

I noticed this today when the kids went through a spell of getting into various minor conflicts with each other. With most other adults, I'd be trying to tamp down my kids' reactions and worrying about what the other adults were thinking, or the other parents would be getting involved in in the conflict and (invariably) escalating it in various ways with their efforts to get their own kids to "behave."

Knowing, as I do now, that Karen and John give their children (and by default, ours) the space to experience their tumults, and seeing that they don't feel as compelled as I do to jump in and try to fix problems and manage behaviors, I was able to relax a bit myself. It was a huge relief to not feel that I had to make my upset children calm down before they were ready to, and it gave me the interior space to notice how long I hold onto my resistance to conflict and upset in my children.

As I was sourly thinking to myself that I was never going to try to go out with another family again because my kids make it too hard by not being flexible, I noticed these inflexible children of mine were in fact running around and playing happily with their friends, crises and tears forgotten, while I was still stewing in this world of horrible conflict (which existed only in my mind, of course.) I want to explore more this tremendous resistance I have to conflict and how it colors my perception of my day and my family, how it drains me and how I might release it.

Enough introspection for now. Here's some photos!









Maddie fed the lorikeets, while an initially-resistant Harry watched with growing interest...
















then tried his hand at it as well.










The kids got up close with an African ball python...


















And a very patient deer put up with a lot of petting.